ut in carving
you can cut the legs off first.'

"I found one side of the fowl much better cooked than the other,--in
fact, I should have called it kiln-dried,--and the other side had
certainly been warmed. The mayonnaise was very peculiar and made me
think of the probable necessity of filling the lamps, and I hoped Baxter
had had this attended to. The pie was made of gooseberry jam, the
easiest pie in the world to make, Anita told me. 'You take the jam just
as it is, and put it between two layers of dough, and then bake it.' The
coffee was very like black writing-ink, and, having been made for a long
time, was barely tepid.

"Strange as it may appear, however, I ate a hearty dinner. I was very
hungry.

"'Now,' said Anita, as she folded her napkin, 'I do not believe you have
enjoyed this dinner half as much as I enjoyed the cooking of it, and I
am not going to wash up anything, for I will not deprive myself of the
pleasure of sitting with you while you smoke your after-dinner cigar on
the front porch. These dishes will not be wanted until to-morrow, and if
you will take hold of one end of the table we will set it against the
wall. There is a smaller table which will do for our breakfast.'

"I drank several glasses of wine as I smoked, but I did not feel any
better. If I had known what was going to happen I should have preferred
to go hungry. I did not tell Anita I was not feeling well, for that
would have made her suffer in mind more than I was suffering in body;
but when I had finished my smoke, and she had gone into the house to
light the parlor lamp, I hurried over to the barn, where Baxter had had
a telephone put up, and I called him up in town, and told him to send me
a chef who could hoe and dig a little in the garden.

"'I thought you would want a man of that kind,' Baxter telephoned. 'Will
Isadore do? He is at your town house now, and can leave by the
ten-o'clock train.'

"I knew Isadore. He was the second chef in my town house, a man of much
experience, and good-natured. I told Baxter to make him understand what
sort of place he was coming to, and to send him on without delay.

"'Do you want him to live in the house?' asked Baxter. And I replied
that I did not.

"'Very good,' said he; 'I will have a tent put up for him near
Baldwin's.'

"When I went to the house I told Anita I had engaged a man.

"'I am glad,' said she; 'but I have just thought of something: I cannot
possibly cook for a man.'

"'O